In the Words of Farley Mowat An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

My [Farley Mowat] journal notes reflect my sense of bewilderment and
loss. ‘…they’re essentially good people. I know that, but what sickens me is
their simple failure to resist the impulse of savagery…they seem to be just
as capable of being utterly loathsome as the bastards from the cities with
their high-powered rifles and telescopic sights and their mindless
compulsion to slaughter everything alive, from squirrels to elephants…

The world has suffered another great loss with the death of author,
naturalist and avid animal advocate, Farley Mowat. I never had the
opportunity to meet him, but I do feel extremely fortunate to have received
an endorsement for my book from him, just two short years before his
passing. [Exposing the Big
Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport]

He didn’t use the internet, so I sent a manuscript to his assistant, who
had to hand deliver it (presumably on snowshoes) to him at his place in
eastern Canada. This is what he had her send back to me, which now holds a
special place on the back cover of the book:

Robertson’s new book could be titled The Big and Dirty
Game, because that’s what it is about — the dirty, bloody business of
killing other animals for sport and fun. Fun? Sure, that’s what the
Sportsmen say . . but read about it for yourself . . .
~ Farley Mowat, Author of Never Cry Wolf and A Whale for the Killing

One of Farley Mowat’s many classic books, A Whale for the Killing,
written in1972, was an autobiographical account of his moving to
Newfoundland because of his love for the land and the sea, only to find
himself at odds with herring fishermen who made sport of shooting at an
80-ton fin whale trapped in a lagoon by the tide. Although he had started
off thinking folks around there were a quaint and pleasant lot, he grew
increasingly bitter over the attitudes of so many of the locals who, in
turn, resented him for “interfering” by trying to save the stranded
leviathan.

Mr. Mowat writes:

My journal notes reflect my sense of bewilderment and
loss. ‘…they’re essentially good people. I know that, but what sickens me is
their simple failure to resist the impulse of savagery…they seem to be just
as capable of being utterly loathsome as the bastards from the cities with
their high-powered rifles and telescopic sights and their mindless
compulsion to slaughter everything alive, from squirrels to elephants…I
admired them so much because I saw them as a natural people, living in at
least some degree of harmony with the natural world. Now they seem
nauseatingly anxious to renounce all that and throw themselves into the
stinking quagmire of our society which has perverted everything natural
within itself, and is now busy destroying everything natural outside itself.
How can they be so bloody stupid? How could I have been so bloody stupid?’

Farley Mowat ends the chapter with another line I can well relate to: “I
had withdrawn my compassion from them…now I bestowed it all upon the whale.”

And Farley Mowat writes here of the wrongheadedness of hunting
intelligent animals, such as geese, in his foreword to Captain Paul Watson’s
book Ocean Warrior:

“Almost all young children have a natural affinity for
other animals, an attitude which seems to be endemic in young creatures of
whatever species. I was no exception. As a child I fearlessly and happily
consorted with frogs, snakes, chickens, squirrels and whatever else came my
way.

“When I was a boy growing up on the Saskatchewan prairies,
that feeling of affinity persisted—but it became perverted. Under my
father’s tutelage I was taught to be a hunter; taught that “communion with
nature” could be achieved over the barrel of a gun; taught that killing wild
animals for sport establishes a mystic bond, “an ancient pact” between them
and us.

“I learned first how to handle a BB gun, then a .22 rifle
and finally a shotgun. With these I killed “vermin”—sparrows, gophers, crows
and hawks. Having served that bloody apprenticeship, I began killing
“game”—prairie chicken, ruffed grouse, and ducks. By the time I was
fourteen, I had been fully indoctrinated with the sportsman’s view of
wildlife as objects to be exploited for pleasure.

“Then I experienced a revelation.

“On a November day in 1935, my father and I were crouched
in a muddy pit at the edge of a prairie slough, waiting for daybreak.

“The dawn, when it came at last, was grey and sombre. The
sky lightened so imperceptibly that we could hardly detect the coming of the
morning. We strained out eyes into swirling snow squalls. We flexed numb
fingers in our shooting gloves.

“And then the dawn was pierced by the sonorous cries of
seemingly endless flocks of geese that cam drifting, wraithlike, overhead.
They were flying low that day. Snow Geese, startling white of breast, with
jet-black wingtips, beat past while flocks of piebald wavies kept station at
their flanks. An immense V of Canadas came close behind. As the rush of air
through their great pinions sounded in our ears, we jumped up and fired. The
sound of the shots seemed puny, and was lost at once in the immensity of
wind and wings.

“One goose fell, appearing gigantic in the tenuous light
as it spiralled sharply down. It struck the water a hundred yards from shore
and I saw that it had only been winged. It swam off into the growing storm,
its neck outstreched, calling…calling…calling after the fast-disappearing
flock.

“Driving home to Saskatoon that night I felt a sick
repugnance for what we had done, but what was of far greater import, I was
experiencing a poignant but indefinable sense of loss. I felt, although I
could not then have expressed it in words, as if I had glimpsed another and
quite magical world—a world of oneness—and had been denied entry into it
through my own stupidity.

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